Camille Clarke

Some 30,000 school chil­dren be­tween Man­zanil­la and Ce­dros will be af­fect­ed as Maxi Taxi School Trans­port dri­vers are plan­ning to go on strike as ear­ly as next week.The Maxi Taxi School Trans­port sys­tem was in­tro­duced by the PTSC in 1989 af­ter the school bus sys­tem col­lapsed.Yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Maxi Taxi School Trans­port Con­ces­sion­aires protest­ed out­side the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's head of­fice at Alexan­dra Av­enue, St Clair, Port of Spain.

The dri­vers held plac­ards and shout­ed, "Fair and just right now" and "23 years-70 cents."Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion Rod­ney Ram­lo­gan said in 2009 the dri­vers were giv­en a 70 cent per seat in­crease.He said mem­bers were now ask­ing for an in­crease of $2.00 per seat be­cause there have been in­creas­es in the prices of spare parts, ac­ces­sories, in­sur­ance, labour costs and maxi-taxis.He said cur­rent rate per head is be­tween $3.70 and $5.70 for long dis­tances.

Ram­lo­gan said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 dri­vers trans­port stu­dents from catch­ment ar­eas in Ica­cos, To­co/Matelot and Blan­chisseuse."We were here on Au­gust 25 and we had a peace­ful protest. He (Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh) promised it would come to a res­o­lu­tion in a month or some form of agree­ment," he said.Ram­lo­gan said eight weeks have passed and there was no re­sponse from Gopeesingh's min­istry.

"This is the kind of style the min­istry is op­er­at­ing with us. That is why we al­ways have to come back here and protest. We are think­ing se­ri­ous­ly about hav­ing dis­rup­tions as soon as next week. They need to come to a form of res­o­lu­tion with this mat­ter. This is our last re­sort and this is what the gov­ern­ment or the min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion wants us to do be­cause they are not tak­ing us on.""I guess the stu­dents are go­ing to be strand­ed be­cause that is what they want us to do."

Ram­lo­gan said the dri­vers have mort­gages and bills to pay."To the min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion we might be a se­cret for the ser­vice we have been pro­vid­ing," he said.At­tempts to con­tact Gopeesingh proved fu­tile.